A neighbour has described the scene of Peter Greene's death after the actor's body was found in his New York apartment.
Greene, who had appeared in films such as Pulp Fiction and The Mask, was found dead last week (12 December) according to his agent, police have said they are not treating the actor's death as suspicious.
Investigators did recover a note reading 'I'm still a Westie', which is a reference to an Irish-American gang which operated out of the Hell's Kitchen neighbourhood of New York between the 1960s and 80s.
The New York Daily News reported that Greene's neighbours called the emergency services after they heard music playing from his home in the 24 hours before his death, and a neighbour described some of the details they claimed made up the scene.
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"Peter was lying on the floor, facedown, facial injury, blood everywhere," a neighbour told the New York Daily News.
Police said that the actor was found unresponsive in his home at around 3.25pm local time and Greene was pronounced dead at the scene.
Greene's manager Gregg Edwards said that the actor had been due to undergo an operation to remove a benign tumour on his lung on the Friday his body was discovered.
He said they had a 'totally normal conversation' about it, and that Greene was 'a little nervous about the operation going in, but he said it wasn’t super serious'.
The actor had also had a number of projects lined up including work on the independent film Mascots and as a narrator for a documentary.
Edwards said: "He was a terrific guy. Truly one of the great actors of our generation. His heart was as big as there was.
"I’m going to miss him. He was a great friend. He worked with so many amazing actors and directors."
Greene, 60, had been born in Montclair, New Jersey, in 1965 and ran way from home at the age of 15.
Moving to New York, a 1996 profile of the actor in Premier magazine said that Greene struggled with drug addiction and later dealing during his early years.
He would ultimately seek treatment after trying to take his own life.
Roles in films such as Laws of Gravity and Clean, Shaven resulted in the actor being cast as the sadistic villain Zed in Pulp Fiction, though Greene said he was 'thoroughly disappointed' in the script when he first read it.
He said: "The way it was written wasn’t my cup of tea. If you ever saw Deliverance, you never saw the guy who took Ned Beatty and made him ‘squeal like a pig’ ever again, so I didn’t think it was a great career move."
Quentin Tarantino convinced him to take the part by allowing Greene to make some changes to the scene so the language remained the same but what was on the screen was toned down as 'it was originally a much more graphic scene'.
Joe Harker